Songoftheday 4/26/14 - So you stand here an angry young woman taking all the pain to heart, I hear you saying you want to see changes but you don't know how to start...

Amy Grant - "Find A Way"
from the album Unguarded (1985)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #29 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 6

Today's Song of the Day comes from one of the biggest artists in 80s contemporary Christian music, Amy Grant, who was signed while she was only 15 years old, and released her self-titled debut album back in 1977 (she was 17 by then). A single from the record, "Old Man's Rubble", was her first to reach the Christian airplay chart, landing at #17. Two years later, with her second album, Amy topped that chart with "My Father's Eyes". She would continue to have success there, charting three more #1 inspirational hits in the early 80s, and selling over a million copies of her 1982 album Age To Age.

In 1985 Amy released her ninth album, Unguarded, which pointed more in a pop music direction, though still retaining a positive message. Produced by the youth minister who discovered her, Brown Bannister, the record included the single "Find A Way", written by Grant with fellow CCM star Michael W. Smith, which would give her her first big pop radio break...

"Find A Way" became Amy's first pop top-40 hit in July of 1985, while going as high as #7 on the adult-contemporary (or "easy-listening") radio chart in Billboard magazine. Although there was hesitation from Christian outlets on her shift in promotion to secular radio, nonetheless the single became her fifth #1 single in that format.

This single was really important in that it was the first of the modern Christian music singles to make the pop charts in any significant way. And doing it without proselytizing or judging.

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And here's Amy with co-writer Smith (who eventually would have a top-10 hit of his own with "Place In This World") in concert..

...and again by herself live..

Up tomorrow: An Eagle sings about a global romance shortage.